In my opinion you don't have to stress yourself with a notepad.. you don't need it, if you can write scripts in other programs like that phpDesigner that im using.. then you can write in notepad also.
I use dreamweaver but is not the best, it just offers me what I need! php Designer is a much complex editor!
While I agree that you should learn to program without something like dreamweaver/etc doing the work for you (horrible programs they are to begin with), notepad is an absolutely horrible way to do this. I use (and have used for over 5 years) Ultra Edit for all of my editing, programing, design, whathaveyou needs. It's like Notepad but built with the designer/programmer in mind, and has some pretty decent networking capabilities to it as well. I started off using this quite some time ago for a C project that was hosted remotely, and just haven't stopped. It's one of the few reasons left for me to use Windows.